On the outskirts of Paris, a vast temporary complex of plywood offices is beaming Euro 2016 to a football-mad world. And in a matter of weeks, it’ll all be gone again. “Nothing has gone wrong yet, touch wood,” says Patrice Roussel, director of Euro 2016 operations at telecoms firm Orange.

And there’s plenty that could go wrong. Each match is broadcast to an average audience of 130 million people, with the entire tournament reaching two billion. It’s up to the staff at the International Broadcast Centre, located inside two seemingly endless halls at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, to make sure the world never misses a kick. The technical infrastructure behind such an operation is understandably massive.

Each of the ten stadia is equipped with 42 cameras, providing 40 broadcasters and 240 rights-holders with live footage from all 51 games. For the first time, eight games will also be broadcast in 4K: the opening match, the four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and the final. An additional four 4K cameras are being used for this, bringing the total per stadium to 46. By comparison, Uefa normally uses 15 for a Champions League game – and that’s not including the cameras at each base camp and fan zone.

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“All the feeds come here," Roussel tells WIRED, gesturing to an array of wires pouring out of a giant glass-fronted wood-walled box labelled Central Equipment Room. The connection, he explains is “point-to-point". Each of the ten stadia has two direct fibre connections to the International Broadcast Centre, or IBC, in Paris. Each of these connections has a capacity of 100 gigabits per second, with the total network capable of carrying two terabits of live broadcast data per second.

A dedicated point-to-point fibre network built by telecoms firm Orange connects each of the ten Euro 2016 stadia to the broadcasting centre in Paris

James Temperton/WIRED

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Orange, which was responsible for building the network to connect each stadium to the IBC, started work four years ago. Much of the backbone already existed, but a lot of extra infrastructure was required to install two direct connections from each stadium to Paris.

“If there’s a mistake bigger than 40 milliseconds, Uefa notices,” says Roussel. That’s why there are two routes for each stadium, he continues. “The feed is always switching every few sub-seconds.” Two buffers, one per route, are used to allow the feed to instantaneously switch. To avoid someone accidentally digging through both cables, the two routes have also been spread out, adds Roussel. And there’s one final failsafe: satellite. Broadcasters can grab a direct feed from each stadium in the event of both fibre lines failing.

The Master Control Room is where UEFA monitors match broadcasts before they are sent onto broadcasters

James Temperton/WIRED

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Once the footage arrives at the IBC, Uefa takes over. The tournament organiser controls and monitors each and every broadcast from the Master Control Room. An array of 16 TV screens, each split into 12 sub-sections, shows every angle of every match. An in-stadium director at each match puts together the broadcast, ensuring that pre-agreed guidelines about how much to show of each team, and even each set of fans, are met.

Footage from each live game reaches the IBC at the speed of light, but the delay between the ball hitting the back of the net (or not, if you’re watching England) can take considerably longer. A three-second delay “would be good”, says Roussel, but some broadcasters can take up to one minute to get live pictures onto TV screens. The addition of live 4K broadcasts has also put a major strain on infrastructure, even if the format remains little-used. HD broadcasts typically use 6Mbit/s – for 4K that can jump to 50Mbit/s depending on the codec used.

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This is what it's all about: the Henri Delaunay Cup on display at the International Broadcast Centre in Paris

James Temperton/WIRED

Outside the ten stadia, the IBC is also responsible for collecting footage from each of the ten fan zones and the 24 team base camps across France. Dedicated teams work at each camp, sending footage back to Paris where it is then stored ready for broadcasters to download. At the time of WIRED’s visit on June 17, 48,840 files had been downloaded by broadcasters, an average of 625 per day. As with the stadiums, the fan zones are also connected directly to the IBC, with two dedicated lines per site sending footage of matches to the big screens while also beaming back fan footage for use in live broadcasts and highlights.

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Then there’s virtual reality. A small team is using six Nokia OZO cameras to capture match and behind-the-scenes footage, most noticeable during the opening ceremony when the hairdryer-esque camera was positioned next to a frantically gesticulating David Guetta. A quick sample of the work-in-progress project put WIRED behind the scenes in the tunnel before kick-off, behind the goal as Italy celebrated victory over Belgium and, of course, right next to Guetta during the opening ceremony. According to Olivier Gaches, digital media manager at Uefa, further tests will result in a more finished product being demoed to broadcasters for the Champions League Final in June 2017. A public launch could soon follow, he said, but that would be dependent on broadcasters getting the VR package right for viewers.

As well as housing facilities for UEFA, the IBC is also home to the 40 host broadcasters

James Temperton/WIRED

Behind the more glitzy-looking Central Control Room, the vast hall of the IBC continues back into a warren of temporary plywood offices housing more technical teams as well as studios for each of the 40 broadcasters. Many are proudly decorated in national colours: the flag of Sweden is draped next to print-outs of a grinning Zlatan Ibrahimovic, flanked on the right by the Ukrainian flag. When a match is taking place, a Uefa representative explains, cheers and gasps can be heard coming from the tiny studios. On the other side of the plywood city, across a car park housing a temporary ’farm’ for satellites and generators (the IBC runs entirely on generator power, using the grid as a backup), is the IT Command Centre. Want to know how many print jobs have been completed at each stadium and see that plotted on a graph? You’ve come to the right place.

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The IT Command Centre monitors everything from print jobs completed at stadiums to the number of meals being served

James Temperton/WIRED

This is where every single aspect of every single stadium is remotely managed, from the number of people on hold at call centres, to the number of VIP ticket holders who have come through the turnstiles and even the number of meals served. “We can fix anything from the control centre,” says Roussel.

But after years of preparation, when a new champion is crowned at the Stade de France on July 10, everything will be dismantled. Orange has just four days to remove its kit from the ten stadia, with Uefa’s plywood city following soon afterwards. It isn’t all destined for the scrapheap though. Germany’s vast studio is being shipped to Brazil in time for the Rio Olympics.